Step 5: Reflecting on actions and analysing your information

Analysing your information

As you complete the actions from your Action Plan, you may have a lot of information to sift through, organise and make sense of. Think about the journey - what happened along the way, what you learnt and what your thoughts were at the time.

What are the main stories and themes coming out of the information you have collected?

What stories best illustrate what you have learnt?

What literacy demands does your organisation place on consumers?

What are you doing well to build consumer health literacy?

What else can you do to help reduce the health literacy demands on consumers?

Is any of this information surprising? Why?

Did you collect information from enough sources and the right sources?

Did any obvious actions emerge from what you have learnt?

We now try to look at everything we do through a health literacy ‘lens’, being guided by all the feedback from our clients, and including them in all the processes.Anne, City Mission.

You will need to analyse your information to make some sense of it by finding common themes or trends. Some of this information may be qualitative (involving words and ideas) other information may be quantitative (involving numbers). Analysing data does not need to be a difficult job. TasCOSS has some good ‘How To’ Guides to help:

Sharing what you have learnt

It is really important to share what you have learnt, not just to ensure that your work is recognised, but also to spread the messages about health literacy through the rest of your organisation. Information on how you have engaged consumers in the process may be particularly useful.

The Health Literacy bug is really catching on around here – it seems like everyone is getting it. Michael, Wyndarra.

Information sharing doesn’t need to mean a lengthy, detailed report with lots of statistics. If we are showing good health literacy skills, the shorter and more concise our written information is, the better. And there are other ways to share information:

An interactive workshop, perhaps involving some of the consumers you have worked with

A presentation (but avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’)

A storybook or a diary of the journey

A video clip of people’s thoughts along the path to becoming a Health Literacy Learning Organisation, or on how different people responded to what has changed through the process.

The Most Significant Change (MSC) approach involves selecting just one story that sums up the experience of a project. For more information click here.